


Dark Matter

by AnotherSpoonyBard



Series: Chaos Theory [13]
Category: Bleach
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Chaos Theory AU, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-16
Updated: 2018-06-25
Packaged: 2019-03-04 10:28:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 19,776
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13362717
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnotherSpoonyBard/pseuds/AnotherSpoonyBard
Summary: Dark matter does not interact with light or other electromagnetic radiation, so it cannot be observed directly—but it can be detected by measuring its gravitational effects. Such unseen material may make up more than ninety percent of the universe. In the aftermath of the Winter War, those affected must take inventory of the changes, many of which aren’t obvious.In which the Kurosaki family and those closest to them survey the damage.





	1. Breaking Through

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> * * *
> 
> Grief find the words, for thou hast made my brain  
> So dark with misty vapors, which arise   
> From out thy heavy mold, that inbent eyes   
> Can scarce discern the shape of mine own pain.  
> \- Sir Philip Sidney
> 
> * * *

She felt… cold. 

_Empty._

Like there was something that used to be there inside her, only now it had been cut out with a rusty sword. A cold one, that chilled her down to her bones. 

Karin wrapped her arms around herself, stumbling forward in the thick dark. A tickle at the back of her throat promised a cough, but somehow she knew she shouldn’t give in to the irritation. Some things just never stopped once they got started. It would be one of them.

Instead she squinted, straining her eyes to try and make out _anything_ about where she was or where she was going. The ground felt spongy in a way she recognized, but she couldn’t remember where she knew it from; every time she tried to think about it, the thought slid away, dodging her grasp. Or sliding out of it like water. She only kind of registered the way her breath puffed out in front of her like a cloud, slightly paler than the rest of the darkness and pretty much her only clue that there had to be light around here somewhere. 

Maybe if she could find it she could get warm, too. 

She could feel a pull. Like there was a rope or a chain or something, attached to her right at the heart and tugging her forward from the inside. She’d checked, though, laying one hand over her chest—it wasn’t an actual soul chain or anything. Which would make sense, right? She was technically dead. Or on the side of the world that you lived when you were dead—if that made any sense. She couldn’t hold onto those thoughts, either. The only thing that seemed constant was the pull itself. 

Though her legs ached with the cold, she kept shuffling her feet forward. It might not be really helpful right now, but the pull was the only thing she had. If she didn’t follow it, she wasn’t getting anywhere, and it was better to go someway than stand still. It had to be. 

Somehow she knew that the only time in her life she’d ever stood still was the one she regretted the most.

So far, she’d managed not to hit any objects in her path. Karin wasn’t exactly sure how that would go if she veered away from the pull, so she kept with it for now. Her skin, bare aside from the oversized t-shirt and athletic shorts she slept in, was starting to numb, prickles of chill fading until there was just… all-over nothing. 

In front of her, she thought she could finally make out the source of the light, a pinprick of _something_ up ahead. Picking up her feet, she shuffled a little faster—the pull was almost dragging her now. She had to be there, and she had to be there _now_.

Her foot struck something; too cold to react quickly, Karin tripped and fell. She tried to catch herself on her hands, but ended up hitting a bump in the ground with her left instead and landing hard on her side. The give in the ground absorbed just enough that her shoulder stayed in its socket, but it still jarred hard, and her breath hissed out between her teeth. Her leg was still wedged against something; she pulled it towards her. Whatever it was caught in wasn’t that heavy, because she managed without too much effort, rolling over onto her back. 

Her hand slid away from what it had landed on, dragging over—wait. 

That couldn’t be right. 

Sitting up, Karin brought her hand to her nose, sniffing. She’s know that smell anywhere.

_Blood._

“What the—”

Almost like the environment was listening, the brightness went up a few notches, just enough for her to make out the wet shine of the liquid on her fingers. But she didn’t feel like she was hurt enough to be bleeding from anywhere, which meant…

Dread snuck up on her and hit, widening her eyes and making Karin suddenly very afraid to look at what she’d just been touching. The pull was so urgent now, like someone was trying to _haul_ her away from this. But she fought it this time, because something else was telling her that she _had_ to know what she’d just tripped over.

All at once, Karin whipped her head to the side, not willing to wait for her courage to fail. Immediately, she gagged, bracing her hands on the ground behind her and scrambling away as fast as she could while still on the ground. The dread turned into horror, clawing at her throat like the hands of a Hollow, squeezing the air out of her and stopping her from breathing. 

No. 

No, this couldn’t be real.

“Mom…”

But there she was: just as Karin remembered her, except not alive, but dead. Bloody, where something had slashed her, tearing through her sweater and carving her skin open in long welts, dark without enough light to make out the redness of them. Her lips were parted, eyes frozen open in pain and surprise. They were dull, even where the light reached, and cold like everything else here was cold. One of her hands stretched forward towards Karin, like she was reaching for her. 

“No. No. That’s not how it—”

Karin froze. In her scramble to get away, she’d hit something else, her palm coming down on a wet spot. Something seeped between her fingers, sticky and thick. She knew what it was. 

But she turned anyway, unable not to. 

“Ichi-nii,” she whispered.

He, too, was exactly as she remembered him. A skinny little kid, with a soft, round face and made of nothing but gentleness and warmth all the way down. Tufts of too-bright hair stuck to his forehead, frozen against his skin. Only now there was a hole in his chest where something had punched right through and… and his heart was gone, scraped out with something jagged and Karin felt sick and she was going to be sick and whywasthishappeningand—

 _You did this._

An unfamiliar voice cut through the frantic swirl of Karin’s thoughts, bringing everything to a dead halt. It was as cold as the air around her. Colder, even, tones layered over one another but timed exactly the same so it hummed. 

“W-what?”

She’d done this? No, that wasn’t right, she—

_The proof is right there in your hand._

Automatically, her eyes fell. She didn’t know when or how it had appeared there, but there was a sword in her hands. A katana: red tsuka, silver blade. She knew it on some instinctive level—this sword was hers. Thin trickles of blood webbed over the length of it, shedding drops onto the ground. Their blood. 

“No—I didn’t. I _didn’t_.”

The speaker’s voice had seemed to come from all directions, so she didn’t know where to look when she said it. Didn't know what to do at all, really, except she felt so _heavy_ she knew she couldn’t stand and so _cold_ she could barely move at all.

“Don’t _lie_ to _me_.” All at once, the voice was immediately near, like a poisonous whisper in her ear.

Karin’s eyes snapped to it; her heart stuttered in her chest. Fear. 

A figure stood over her, its face a bright, bone-white mask that caught even the faint light. Red lines streaked over the beaked shape of it, the large, round eyeholes letting her see the black sclera and red-gold irises of whatever face was under it. 

Before she could process any more than that, the figure raised a sword of its own. The edge glinted dully for half a second; the air whistled low and dark. Pain exploded in Karin’s chest. 

She screamed.

* * *

“Karin. Karin!”

She thrashed, trying to escape from whatever she could feel holding her, trying to get away from the blade striking for her heart. Away from the dark. Away from the cold.

“ _Karin_!”

Her eyes snapped open. Karin blinked, trying to clear her blurry vision. She knew the voice. It was—Yuzu. It was Yuzu, and she was in their room in Rukongai, from the ceiling. Right. Yuzu wouldn’t have been with her at the Sixth, anyway. 

Swallowing was hard; there was some kind of lump in her throat that meant she felt it almost _click_ on the way down.

“Um… can you do something about the heat?”

Now that Karin had the chance to look closer, she could see that Yuzu’s hairline was damp with sweat, a thin layer of it on her face reflecting the light coming in from their window. It took her a few more seconds to understand why—she was doing that thing again. Letting a breath hiss out from between her teeth, Karin tried to get her reiatsu back under control, but it was harder than it should have been. Like it was fighting her. 

Still, she got it eventually, groaning and pushing herself up from the futon. She felt something smooth and hard under her hand, and grimaced, shoving it further beneath the covers as quickly as she could. 

Yuzu waited a moment, then sat down next to her, looking at her with obvious concern. Karin knew what she was going to say next before she said it. 

“Karin… is everything okay?”

Her first instinct was to brush the question off. To say that everything was fine. Because Karin was always _fine_. 

Except when she wasn’t. 

Still, she couldn’t quite bring herself to explain what had just happened. “Nightmare,” she said, shrugging slightly. “Nothing major, just—everything’s still in there, you know?”

All that stuff from the war was as good an excuse as she could ask for. It was even kind of true. It just… wasn’t the whole story.

From the look on Yuzu’s face, she saw right through that. But she wasn’t the type to push too far, and Karin watched her face smooth over as she backed down, at least for now. With a soft sigh, she dipped her chin and tried to smile. “Should we go start on breakfast? It’s probably not that much longer before Dad will be up anyway.”

Starting on breakfast pretty much meant Karin would sit around at the kitchen island while Yuzu did all the cooking, but that didn’t sound so bad right now, honestly. 

She was opening her mouth to agree when something caught her attention from the corner of her eye. A jigokuchō was on the windowpane, awaiting entrance. Why the heck were they getting one of those while they were on leave? Maybe it was Uryū? He was totally the type to be up at this stupid hour of the morning. 

Yuzu stood to let it in—that window was sticky in the frame. It had been for years. Karin had chosen not to say that it might have been her fault. A soccer ball kicked off-course could’ve knocked it out of alignment easy. It seemed like forever ago.

While her sister was preoccupied pulling the window open, Karin flipped back the cover of the futon. 

The mask stared back at her with empty eye sockets. 

She shuddered and stuffed it quickly under her pillow. Clearly, breaking it in half and tossing the pieces into the garbage was not enough to get rid of it. Maybe if she buried it somewhere in the outer districts. 

It was never really going to leave her, though. 

She knew that. 

The jigokuchō hovered in front of her face; she swallowed and extended a finger towards it, ignoring the taste of bile on her tongue.

_Kurosaki-kun. I have some information that may be of use to you. Please come by my office at nine this morning, if you don’t mind._

‘If she didn’t mind.’ Yeah freaking right. She’d have to be out of her mind to ignore a summons from _him_.

“What is it?” Yuzu asked. The worry wasn’t gone from her eyes yet. 

Karin wondered if _that_ would ever leave _her_.

“Uh… Sōtaichō wants to see me, I guess. Didn’t say why.”

* * *

Man, this office really sucked. 

It wasn’t bad looking, necessarily, but everything in it gave off a vibe like she shouldn’t touch it because it was too old or too valuable or too… something. She had no idea how the hell Kyōraku could stand the fancy, polished, scuff-free desk in some kind of shiny dark wood that oozed fanciness like it was pus. Or those super-delicate wall scrolls that were probably done on rice paper and then backed in something where real gold looked like an inlay. Even the furniture looked too nice to sit in—if this had been the living world, someone’s grandma probably would have left the plastic covers on.

Actually, she was pretty surprised the old Sōtaichō hadn’t. Was there a word for when you were fussy as hell but also really stern and judgmental? Because that had to be the right word for Yamamoto, and she knew it from nothing but his reputation and then this fucking office. 

“Your office sucks,” she said out loud, because she had almost no brain-to-mouth filter and definitely no sense of self-preservation. She still hadn’t exactly _meant_ to. It just came out.

It was probably only years of friendship with people who knew better that made her even realize her mistake in the first place. Getting her to realize the ones like this _before_ she made them was a work in progress.

Oops.

“I’ve been considering painting it pink,” Kyōraku replied lightly, lifting his head from where he was bent over a stack of paperwork. She had the feeling Uryū had never seen that sight in his life. 

“Yeah, that’ll really go with the rest of it.” Her mouth was still several steps ahead of her brain. It was a really good thing he didn’t seem to mind. 

Kyōraku grinned at her outright. “Ah, but that’s exactly the point. It’s an excuse to trade out some of the rest of it too. This desk would be an eyesore in a pink room.”

Well, he wasn’t technically wrong about that, she supposed. Karin felt herself relax a little, almost despite herself. Maybe that was what let her get her thinking and talking back in line with each other. “Uh… also. Sōtaichō.” Years of working at the procedurally-strict Sixth Division finally kicked in, and she went to bow. She’d already entered without his say-so, which was something she’d managed to never do with Kuchiki. 

But then again, there was something about Kyōraku that was different. Well, _a lot_ of things about him were different, but he managed to give off a more open and comfortable impression without backsliding his way out of any authority. He didn’t fit the room, but at the same time he did, and there was something pretty reassuring about that. Maybe.

He waved a hand at her. “Don’t go getting formal on me now, Karin-san. We were doing so well.”

Karin blinked, then straightened. “Uh… okay?”

The little nod she got backed up the first cue, and so she dropped the last of the formality. It was exhausting anyway. “So… what am I doing here?” He had to be extremely busy, and she was on leave. Not that she’d expect to get called here if she wasn’t, either.

Kyōraku set aside his brush and rubbed at the whiskers on his chin. It was still pretty early in the morning, but she couldn’t help but wonder if he’d even slept the night before. He didn’t look like it himself, but this desk showed the signs of an all-nighter or three: stacks and secondary stacks of papers, an empty bottle of ink next to the half-empty one he was using now, and a faint smell of tea, which would have faded if it had been from yesterday. Since there weren’t any cups or anything around still, it had to have been from a while ago, though. Some hour when most people were asleep.

“I’m guessing Kisuke-san or Yoruichi-san explained what’s happening to you,” he said, dragging his hand down his neck before putting it inside the opposite sleeve. 

It made sense that he’d know, Karin figured. He was the Sōtaichō, and unlike the last one he seemed to get along with people. 

“I got the basics. The rest of it was kind of hard to understand,” she admitted. Really, past ‘you’re part Hollow now,’ how much could the rest of it even _matter_? How was she supposed to tell people that some asshole had bitten her and now she was partly something they were all supposed to fight against? Partly the kind of thing that had killed a lot of loved ones and comrades?

“You’re not gonna… am I getting fired?”

But Kyōraku wasn’t looking at her like he wanted to get rid of her. She tried to stand a little taller under his eyes, but there wasn’t really anything for it. The fact that _she_ slept like shit lately had to be showing, even if she’d worn the uniform and the zanpakutō she couldn’t hear anymore to try and feel normal.

He shook his head. “Of course not.”

Well, that made about as much sense as anything did lately. 

Not. Fucking. Much.

It must have been obvious, because he elaborated. “What happened to you isn’t unprecedented, Karin-san. I know you didn’t have much contact with them, but Shinji-san and his group are all in a position very similar to yours.”

Wait. Shinji? That was the guy who’d been kind of… around, for a while, in Karakura. By the time he and his goons showed up, Yuzu had been gone, and Karin had been unconscious at the time. She couldn’t say she was a fan, considering that what happened to her sister would have been _completely fucking preventable_ if they’d bothered to get their asses in gear a couple of minutes earlier.

Hell, she was pretty sure they’d been at the battle, too; she hadn’t been paying much attention to anything that wasn’t that Espada and her family then. 

“They’re like me?” She crossed her arms, bringing her eyebrows together.

Kyōraku nodded. She didn’t really use ‘sagely’ to describe a lot of people she knew, but she figured it was the right word here. 

“They are. I’m going to be asking them to rejoin the Gotei 13. If I’m successful, I’ll also be requesting that one of them work with you for a while. I don’t know if Kisuke-san got to this part of the explaining, or if you remember it, but there are some unique difficulties that you’ll be facing. Also some unique abilities you’ll learn, if you can get the difficulties under control.”

Karin’s mind flashed back to the mask stuffed under her pillow. She grimaced. 

“You mean it gets better?”

He tilted his head slightly. “That’s something you’d have to ask them,” he said, lifting his shoulders and letting them fall. “But it gets easier to control.”

Honestly… she’d fucking take it.

* * *

Karin left the Sōtaichō’s office halfway in a daze. Someone to work with her. Someone like her, who could help her control the—the thing. 

The Hollow. 

That was good. Right? Probably as good as it was going to get. She’d asked Urahara if there was any way of getting rid of it, and the look he’d given her was enough of an answer on that. It was always gonna be there, and she couldn’t force it out with konsō or by running herself through with a zanpakutō or any of the other ways she could think of. 

Not that she’d really wanted to get anyone to stab her anyway, but if there was a chance it would work… 

She’d prefer physical pain and a lot of time in the Fourth to dealing with this. Too bad she had no choice. Constant nightmares, that fucking mask showing up at random times. The worst of it had to be the fact that she couldn’t see or talk to Hisaku. That, more than anything, was how she knew it was there. Because it was keeping her spirit away from her. 

_That_ was driving her crazy—and not slowly.

Karin stopped. She’d never figured herself for the kind of person who got too lost in her thoughts to pay attention to her surroundings; apparently today was just going to be a different kinda day. A quick scan put her somewhere near the Ninth—one of the containment domes for training was out here. She hesitated for only a second before changing direction and heading towards it. 

Maybe she could get Hisaku to talk to her if she practiced. 

Her steps were hasty; the idea was in her head, and now she couldn’t get rid of it. It hadn’t really occurred to her that the place might be occupied at this time of day—she’d gotten used to the rhythm of the Sixth, maybe. Drills early, paperwork midmorning, anything extra in the midafternoon.

When she hauled open the door of the dome, though, cold hit her like a wall. Her skin prickled, the hair on her arms standing straight. For a moment, she was back in her dream, breath puffing in front of her eyes and something she couldn’t explain pulling her forwards. It didn’t matter if she wanted to go, she _had_ to. The light was dim, reflecting off the snow and making it glitter. The ground under her sandals had a give to it, even if it wasn’t springy. An icy wind ripped at her hair, plastering the fabric of her shikakushō close to her body on the right side, where it was coming from. It was the same, but also—not?

If she turned and looked, would they be there?

“Kurosaki?”

The voice was definitely wrong. Karin’s attention snapped to the speaker almost against her will.

Hitsugaya was wearing almost as much of the snow as the ground was. It sat on top of the ice coating his arms and shoulders, plus the wings and tail his zanpakutō made. There was probably some in his hair, too, unless it was that sparkly all the time. 

Somehow, it was _that_ thought in particular that broke the grip her kind-of nightmare had on her. Maybe because it was too ridiculous. 

Karin shook her head hard, blinking as it seemed to get brighter. Probably because the clouds were going away. “Uh.”

Hitsugaya narrowed his eyes, sheathing his sword. The ice cracked off him like a second skin, falling onto the snow with soft thuds and a few lighter, glassy sounds where the pieces hit each other. “What are you doing here?”

Oh, right. She’d kind of just walked in on his practice, hadn’t she? That was pretty rude even for her. 

“Sorry.”

That obviously didn’t make anything any clearer to him. Where she was expecting grumpy, though, he went another direction, reaching up and mussing his hair. Sure enough, more snow fell off in a puff. He approached warily, like he wasn’t exactly sure he wanted to. The steps crunched, then came to a stop a few feet away. Hitsugaya huffed, then pointedly turned his head, looking at nothing on the other side of the dome. 

“…you okay?”

_No._

“I’m fine.” She brought her arms up, crossing them under her chest. It was still cold in here. Why wasn’t she leaving?

“Okay.” He didn’t exactly sound like he believed her, but he mirrored her posture. “Thanks, by the way.”

Karin did a double-take, but he was still glaring at some fixed point in the distance like it had done something to offend him. 

“What?”

“I said thanks.” Hitsugaya wasn’t happy to be repeating it; his voice got this little extra edge to it, smooth but sharp. Like one of those ice shards. Seriously, if anyone’s zanpakutō powers were stupidly on the nose—

Well—hers too, really. 

“Uh, yeah. I got that part. But why?”

His mouth pulled to the side; it was almost a scowl, but didn’t quite get there. Too uncomfortable, maybe. “The battle. I was probably going to charge Aizen. Do something—stupid. You made me think twice about it, so I didn’t.”

It pretty much went without saying that doing that would not have gone well for him. In the end, though, she’d failed to take her own advice and lost her shit when Anzp—

_Not thinking about that right now._

“Oh. You’re welcome, I guess.” She shrugged. It wasn’t that big of a deal, she didn’t think. 

Hitsugaya nodded. “If there’s ever anything stupid you need someone to stop you from doing…” 

Karin wasn’t really great with reading people or any of that stuff. She didn’t have Yuzu’s knack for making friends, either. But she recognized a truce when she saw one. Maybe it was even a bit more than a truce—not that she could put a good label on it. 

Of course, the stupid thing she really wished she could _not do_ had already been done. She shifted her weight, new footprints tracking over the old ones as her feet shuffled. “You, uh… yeah. Thanks. I will.” She had no idea if that was true or not, but it seemed like the right thing to say. 

It got him to look her in the face, anyway. 

“Good.”

* * *

“So, uh… I don’t really know how to say this, so I’m just gonna do it: the Sōtaichō wants me to be captain of the Seventh.”

Karin paused with her sake dish halfway to her mouth, blinking across the table at Renji. Rukia outright dropped hers, but luckily Uryū was quick with the napkins before it got everywhere. 

“I knew something was weird when you offered to pay,” Rukia declared, prompting the other two to grin. 

Karin felt like hers was a _little_ forced on her face, but she was happy for him anyway. Renji worked his ass off pretty much constantly, and if anyone deserved to be a captain, it was him. Raising her cup the rest of the way, she knocked the rest of it back in a swallow, running her tongue over her teeth after she swallowed. 

“Congratulations,” Uryū said, the first of the three to find the actual polite response. 

Right. “Nice going, monkey-face,” Karin added, feeling her smile get a little less strained when he fake-glared at her. 

“Is your bankai demonstration soon?” Rukia asked, helping Uryū clear the napkins onto one of the used plates and pouring herself a fresh drink. Luckily, she hadn’t broken the dish. The restaurant was just this side of too fancy for their normal shenanigans. Not that there was too much to worry about: without Matsumoto here to goad people, dinner had been pretty tame. 

Then again, with everyone’s mood lately they could have invited every officer in the Gotei 13 and it wouldn’t have gotten any louder than a dull roar. Probably. 

Renji nodded, rubbing at a spot on his forehead where one of his new tattoos was still healing. He seemed to add to the set every once in a while. Karin hadn’t asked him about them directly, but she figured these new ones had to have something to do with the war. What else was anything about anymore? 

“Probably,” he said. “I dunno yet. I wanted to get a few things worked out before I gave him an answer.”

“Gave him a—why the hell would you say no?” Karin pulled a face at him. 

He shrugged then, kind of awkwardly. “I wasn’t planning to, but I did kind of want to get the fukutaichō thing done first.”

“You have someone in mind?” Uryū did that thing where technically he was asking a question, only it was obvious that he knew the answer already. 

Renji drummed his fingers on the table, the third one making a different sound because of a knot in the wood. Karin glanced down at them once, then back up at his face. He was looking right at her. Something uncomfortable clenched in her guts, like they were in a hand and the hand was squeezing them all together. 

“I was hoping you’d be interested, Kurosaki.”

As one, the other two pairs of eyes shifted from him to her. Karin swallowed. “I… dunno if that’s a good idea.” 

“Why not?” Uryū knew the answer to that one, too.

Dammit. 

Karin shook her head. “You guys know why.” She hadn’t told all of them personally, but as her superior officer, Renji would know. And she’d told Uryū, who she knew would have told Rukia. She didn’t mind—it saved her from having to explain things herself, and none of them was gonna go around blabbing to everyone. 

“I don’t care about that, Kurosaki. You’re still you, and that’s the person I want for my vice-captain.” She could hear the frown in his voice. 

“I’m a _Hollow_ , Renji. You fucking _should_ care.” Karin gripped the edges of the table, squeezing down with her fingers. Even if there was maybe supposedly someone who could teach her how to deal with that, she wasn’t counting on it. Couldn’t let herself count on it. And he shouldn’t count on it, either.

He shook his head; she could tell from the rustle of fabric. “Having Hollow reiatsu doesn’t make you a Hollow. I talked to that Shinji guy. He was as much a shinigami as me or Rukia, even if he didn’t get treated like it.” 

The treatment wasn’t what Karin was worried about. People could think whatever they wanted and she’d just as soon tell them to fuck off. 

What she was worried about was the possibility that what they thought might be true.

“You don’t get it,” she said. “There’s this… this _thing_ inside of me, and it’s _not me_ but it _might be_ and I _don’t want it_.” Her knuckles turned white as she redoubled her grip. She wondered what would give first: her fingers or the tabletop? Maybe she’d crack it, and then it would be like she felt. Cracked, right down the _fucking_ middle. 

A hand touched her left one, the fingers sliding under her palm and lifting. The angle forced her to let go of the table without really applying any pressure. Leverage. Uryū wasn’t wearing his gloves. 

“My inner world is quite literally divided into halves,” he said. “It wasn’t always that way. When I’d realized what else was there, I wasn’t… pleased.” 

He didn’t let go of her hand; she let her other one fall back down to her lap. Karin’s jaw tightened before she could get it to relax enough to talk. The water glass on the table in front of her was dripping more than it should have been. Was she doing that? Making it too hot?

“How did you deal with it?”

He exhaled a harsh breath; the frustration wasn’t at her, though. “I’m still dealing with it, but the first step is… realizing that you need two halves to make a whole, I suppose.”

“What if I was whole before, though?” She glanced up at him, her eyebrows pinching together. 

Uryū met her eyes steadily, blue to dark grey. “You let the new parts make you better, rather than worse.” His free hand pushed his glasses up his nose; the lenses were fogging. 

Karin was definitely doing that; she took a deep breath and tried to rein it in. 

“For what it’s worth,” Rukia put in gently, “nobody expects you to have this all figured out right here and now. It’s gonna be tough, but you don’t have to deal with it by yourself.” 

Not everything was an obstacle to smash through. Hisaku wasn’t talking to her, but Karin felt the echo of something she’d been told over and over again anyway. For once, she was really relieved to know it, because this obstacle didn’t seem like one she’d be _able_ to get past that way.

Renji nodded. “So you got problems. Not to make light of it, Kurosaki, but we’ve all got problems. And you’ll get through ‘em like the rest of us will. You think I have any idea how to be a captain? Because I really don’t. I’m planning to figure it out as I go, and I was kinda hoping you’d do the same.”

Karin scoffed, giving Uryū’s hand a slight squeeze before she let it go. “Well, I guess someone needs to keep you from fucking it up too badly, huh?”

Renji rolled his eyes, crossing his arms. “Yeah, yeah, laugh it up, birdbrain. We’ll see who’s stopping who from screwing it up.”

“I feel bad for the Seventh,” Rukia remarked into her sake glass. 

Karin caught Uryū’s eyes and smiled.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one could almost be subtitled 'the one where everyone is fucked up.' I mean, I say that perhaps too lightly, but it really is about the emotional fallout of certain events in Catastrophe Theory; chapters will be divided by POV. Isshin, Yuzu, and Uryū to follow.
> 
> * * *
> 
> As always, reviews are appreciated, but not strictly necessary.


	2. Bending Spoons

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> * * *
> 
> Oh, dry the glistening tear.  
> That dews that martial cheek;  
> Thy loving children hear,  
> In them thy comfort seek.  
> With sympathetic care,  
> Their arms around thee creep.  
> For oh, they cannot bear  
> To see their father weep!  
>   
> -Gilbert and Sullivan
> 
>   
> 
> 
> * * *

Isshin sighed heavily, rolling his gloves off and stepping carefully on the lever that opened his small trash can. The bundled latex rustled when it fell in; the lid closed after it with a soft thud. Scrubbing down at the sink, Isshin patted his hands dry and exited the exam room, clipboard and paperwork tucked under his elbow. 

“Kurosaki-san.” 

He turned towards the voice, finding that Ikeda was poking her head in from the front room of the clinic. She was one of the patients that volunteered their hours handling the administrative parts of the job so that Isshin could see more people.

“There’s a woman here to see you—Matsumoto-san?”

Isshin blinked. “Yeah, I know her; send her in, please.”

He had no more than a few seconds to figure out what to do with himself before Rangiku showed up. Isshin waffled for a couple of them, and ended up putting his clipboard down on one of the counters at the small nurse’s station and untying his sleeves. He was still winding the ties around his hands when the door opened again and she stepped into the office section of the clinic. 

She’d been here before, obviously, but he hadn’t been warned in advance that time. Isshin only kind of understood why he was nervous, but he tried not to let it get to him too much, pasting on a grin and setting his sleeve ties on top of the clipboard. 

“Hey Rangiku. What’s—”

He lost track of the sentence when he got a better look at her. She was out of uniform, dressed in a spring yukata instead, a casual one with a bright flower print. It was exactly the kind of thing she’d always worn off-duty, but she didn’t look at home in it right now. Not with those dark circles under her eyes. 

“The Sōtaichō put me on leave,” she said. 

Isshin could only gawk for a moment; her tone was _delicate_. He’d never heard Rangiku sound fragile once. Not once, as long as they’d known each other. If she felt it—and she must have, sometimes—she’d faked her way past it with breeziness and humor. Now she sounded like she’d crack down the middle if he so much as brushed her by accident. 

It didn’t take a genius to know _why_ she sounded that way, obviously, but he hadn’t thought she’d come to _him_ feeling like this. 

_Come on, you idiot. Get it together; she needs your help_. The voice in his head was more Masaki than Engetsu, but he took it for gospel just the same. Maybe _because_ of the fact. 

His frame of reference moved a bit to the left: Rangiku in this much pain wasn’t something he was sure he knew how to handle, but he was a doctor. _Other people_ in pain were kind of normal. Isshin grabbed one of the desk chairs without thinking too hard about it, rolling it out and around the station and to her side. 

“Here,” he said, using his best ‘understanding physician’ voice, since all the other ones he had weren’t operational just now. “Take a seat, Rangiku.”

She nodded, crossing her arms under her chest and sinking onto the office chair. “Thanks.” The word was distant, and still too soft. Like all the life had been sucked out of it. 

It had been easier the first time she was here. When she was just scolding him for all the things he deserved to be scolded about. Even if there’d been pain under that, too, there’d also been something he could do about it, or at least try to do. Isshin wasn’t sure there was anything he could _do_ about this pain. 

But… she’d come here for a reason. She must’ve, because Rangiku wasn’t the type to show anyone her weak side. 

Grabbing a second chair, Isshin sat in it, rolling so he was right in front of her, his knees a few inches from hers. Leaning forward, he braced his forearms on his legs, tilting his head to the side so he could see her better. She’d bowed her head forward, and all that bright blonde hair was suddenly a very effective curtain between her and the outside world. 

Isshin decided to start with what she’d already given him. “Leave, huh? Karin and Yuzu have some, too. I think they’re gonna come back here for a while.” His daughters didn’t have property of their own in the Seireitei yet, and frankly he didn’t mind that a bit. “Any idea how you’re going to spend yours?” He kept his words slow, gentle, deliberate. 

Rangiku shook her head; the curtain rippled with the motion. “I don’t know. I thought—I thought maybe I could go back. But I tried, and I—can’t. I can’t.”

Back. Back where? Isshin knew she’d grown up in one of the bad areas of the Rukongai, with Ichimaru. She probably meant there. 

What was the living world phrase for this? He had the feeling he was entering a minefield here. Maybe he’d get lucky and not step on any. But he had to try regardless. 

“Maybe it’s just not the right time yet. It’s only been a few weeks, Rangiku. Give yourself a little time and patience.” He of all people knew she had plenty of those things for others. Isshin finally caught her eyes; he tried to smile again, but wasn’t sure he managed to make it look convincing. 

She huffed, a short exhalation, and finally loosened her arms from their tight hold around her body. Parting the curtain with one hand, Rangiku tucked some of the hair behind an ear. “You’re probably right. I just—I saw this coming. I knew what was going to happen, deep down. As soon as he—as soon as he left.” Her lips compressed, discomfort settling heavier over her shoulders and pulling them down. 

Isshin ran a hand back through his hair, then forward again, rubbing over his scalp and grimacing. “So you think you shoulda been more… ready for it. This. Prepared.”

Rangiku tipped her chin down, almost too slightly to see.

His arm dropped heavily back to his knee. “You can’t do that to yourself, Rangiku. Seeing it coming doesn’t make it any better when it gets here. Take it from me.”

Isshin had always known he’d face down that Hollow. For just about ten years, he’d known he would—and that either he or everything that was left of his wife and son would be dead by the end of it. It didn’t make a damn thing easier. 

Letting out a slow, deep breath, he tried to bring the conversation back around to her. That was the important thing right now. “So for now, you can’t go back. That’s okay. Do you know what you want to do with your leave?”

“I think I want—” Rangiku paused, clearly uncertain. Hesitation pulled her mouth to one side; she met his eyes again with the air of someone gearing up to something. “If I can’t face it yet, I’ve got to do something with myself. If I’m not doing something, I’m just going to think about it.”

He gave that some thought. An obvious answer popped into his head; Isshin went with it. “You could stay here for a while,” he offered. “If you need something to do… you could give me a hand around here. Until the distraction isn’t necessary anymore.”

Rangiku’s eyebrows furrowed. “Are you sure? I mean, Karin-chan and Yuzu-chan probably need the space, too, right? And you—I don’t want to get in the way of anything.”

Isshin shook his head immediately. “You won’t be,” he said. “There’s plenty of room, and… it might not be bad for us, either, you know?” To have people to lean on. He knew his daughters had people like that, and Isshin figured he did too, at least to some extent. But he couldn’t pretend like his division hadn’t been a huge part of that for him, when he’d been with them. _Rangiku_ had been a huge part of that. If he could help her this time—well, it wasn’t so much paying a debt as just wanting to help, but he’d be glad to do it. 

She thought on that for a while, and he didn’t rush her, reaching forward just enough to gently squeeze her knee before he stood and resumed his work. She stayed there, in the chair in front of the nurse’s station, for a good half-hour. He could see her starting to consider it, glancing around at the room like she was trying to decide how it’d fit into her life for a little while. Or maybe how she’d fit into _it_. 

She stopped him with a hand to his forearm on one of his passes by. 

“Okay,” she said, tilting her head to look up at him. “I’ll stay a while. But you’ve got to give me things to do, Isshin. I don’t want to freeload here.”

His smile carved a fissure into his face. “Well, that’s gonna take some getting used to. Rangiku asking for work to do.” 

When her eyes narrowed, though, he dropped the joke. 

“Sure thing,” he said. “There’s plenty to go around.”

* * *

Having three people around who all liked to keep busy as a method of coping was… different. 

Obviously he wouldn’t wish for the situation, but it did free Isshin’s time up to make more house calls, and to check on patients much farther out in the Rukongai, ones he usually couldn’t see more than once every year or so. He made a point to carry a bunch of supplies out to the more remote areas and set up a free on-site clinic for a day, but more than a few times a year was pushing it, and he tried to spread himself out area-wise. 

It wasn’t nearly enough to help all the people out there that needed helping, and he knew it. But that kind of problem wasn’t something one doctor would ever be able to fix. He did what he could anyway, and tried not to spend too much time thinking about how things looked a little worse every time he went. Whether that was because they were actually getting worse or just because he’d gotten better at seeing was not clear to him. 

The Rukongai was a massive place; traversing it on foot without _shunpō_ , even just a straight line of the radius, would probably take months. Thankfully, that wasn’t a problem for Isshin, who _could_ flash-step, and pretty fast at that. 

He drew to a stop once he reached Sakahone; a glance around put him in the seventy-second ward. The area was familiar to Isshin—though he’d stopped mostly by instinct, he knew exactly what instinct it was. The village here was bigger than the last time he’d been. He supposed that was probably Chiaki-san’s doing. The dirt road he stood on was worn smooth and packed hard by thousands of bare feet; there were a few children out and about alongside the farmers. Rickety stalls sold pale, small produce; the kimono of their proprietors were worn down to colorless, threadbare fabric. 

They didn’t starve, for the most part. Souls without reiryoku needed very little food, but that wasn’t the same as needing none, and it did undercut one of the few types of business anyone had the ability to run out here. The whole thing had the feel of a trap, and Isshin knew that pretty well by this point. 

A shadow detached itself from the shade under a dusty awning. Isshin recognized him as soon as he stepped into the harsh sunlight. 

“Shiba-sama.” 

“Hello, Hotaru-kun. Visiting Chiaki-san today?” Isshin hefted his supplies a little higher on his shoulders.

The younger man nodded, reaching up to run a callused hand over the dark fuzz atop his head. The tattoos on his arms were bright against his dark skin—white, blue, and golden ink with pieces of red and orange and green. “She’s not well. Shinjirō was going to come ask for you, but you know how she is.”

Isshin nodded. “Yeah, I do. But I’m here now. Think she’ll let me see her?”

Hotaru snorted, letting his hand fall to rest on the tsuka of his zanpakutō. He didn’t wear any sort of uniform otherwise, though. “She’s not gonna say no if you’re insisting.” Tilting his head down the street, he led the way. 

Isshin fell in step beside him. “You and Shinjirō-kun have to be pretty close to graduating now, right?”

“We’ll be finishing third year fairly soon,” Hotaru replied. “I’m taking the exit exams this year; I think he’s close to shikai, but not there yet.”

“Oh yeah? You’ve got yours, then. Congratulations—what’s his name?”

A very small smile turned the corner of Hotaru’s mouth. “Thank you, Shiba-sama. His name is Shizuen.” He left it at that; either he hadn’t yet been able to figure out more or else he was being modest or private about it. 

That was respectable, even if it wasn’t really necessary here. “I’m sure Chiaki’s proud of you,” Isshin said, halting while Hotaru opened the door into her house. “Even if she was expecting it.”

Hotaru didn’t have a reply to that, merely bowing at the entrance and waiting for Isshin to precede him through. 

The house itself was just about as ramshackle as the others, though it didn’t seem to be in immediate danger of falling over. Hotaru’s living stipend was clearly going to good use, if the new support beams grafted onto the weaker parts of the house were anything to go by. Shinjirō’s probably were, too—even if he wasn’t a member of the family, Chiaki had all but raised him. The tatami were old, worn down and almost nonexistent in places; Isshin removed his shoes anyway. 

The whole place was about as clean as anything could get out here, with the dust. Kept with a kind of pride that didn’t go away because the situation got worse than it used to be. Someone had brought fresh flowers in from the garden in the back. They weren’t all that pretty, being washed-out and misshapen like a lot of what grew here—but they smelled nice like they were supposed to, and even a pale purple was more color than he’d have seen another district down. 

Their scent was overpowered by smoke as Isshin headed for the back, Hotaru trailing behind him. Sure enough, when he reached the living room, it was to find Chiaki with a pipe gripped between her teeth. Apparently she was in the middle of dictating something to Shinjirō, who bore her clipped pace with amused indulgence edged with concern. 

Both looked up when Isshin entered, setting down his supplies beside the doorway. “Hello, Chiaki-san. Shinjirō-kun.” 

She looked… well, not the way he was used to seeing her. Chiaki had been a retainer of the main house back when it was a house, and in his childhood, Isshin had known her as a lady with an iron spine and enough vigor to keep up with three generations of Shiba. He’d managed to forget how small she was—somehow he did that every time. But more than that, her condition had clearly worsened. Her grey hair was lank, thin, and dry. The wrinkles had pressed more deeply into her face, skin papery and fragile, stretched over what looked like little but her bones. It was something that her meticulous way of dressing could only do so much to hide. 

And there was only so much he’d be able to do for her, either. 

“Isshin-kun, is that you?” She squinted in his general direction; the cataracts had gotten thick and rheumy over her eyes. Smoke curled from the end of the thin pipe, drifting towards the open window shutters. 

“You got me,” he replied, putting on a smile so she’d hear it in his voice. “I came to check on you, Chiaki-san.”

She harrumphed at that, shaking her head. “If you want to be checking on someone, the Ando girl down the road has a cough. I’m just fine.”

He made a mental note to check with the family in question; for now he wasn’t going anywhere. “Of course you are,” he said, bobbing his head agreeably. “But you know me, Chiaki-san; I’m always sticking my nose where it doesn’t belong. Best to let me so I’m out of your hair faster.” Crouching next to the bag, Isshin withdrew a few of his instruments: stethoscope, otoscope, and the like. Diagnostic kaidō were all well and good, but sometimes the more basic way of doing things was just as effective. Let him save the reiryoku, too. 

He’d probably need it by the end of the day.

* * *

By the time he made it to Kūkaku’s place that night, Isshin was covered in the same dust as everyone in Sakahone seemed to end up wearing. He stopped outside the house to wash himself down a bit from the barrel of rainwater standing outside, then headed in without bothering to knock. She’d know he was here. 

Kūkaku was alone this time, though that wasn’t exactly unusual. It seemed like Ganju spent a lot of his time out, especially at night. She nodded once at Isshin when he entered, then went back to what she was doing—inventory forms for the fireworks business, it looked like. 

“You smell like the outer districts,” she informed him bluntly when he sat down next to her. 

“Look like ‘em, too,” he agreed, picking up the open bottle of sake on the edge of her low desk. She’d left a spare cup for him. His cousin knew his routines pretty well, there was no doubt about it. 

She grunted, adding a few strokes to a line then setting the brush down. She moved the paper to the far stack with the same hand. Kūkaku had way too much pride to let anyone do any of the work she thought of as hers just because of the missing arm. Isshin had always admired her for that. 

What he was missing didn’t impede him physically, but he found it difficult to work around nevertheless. Kūkaku, though—even after Kaien, she’d kept her head up. Even after the fall of the house. 

“You see the Sugitani, then?” She was looking at him, now. But she would be—this was important. 

Isshin sighed. It came out heavier than he meant it to, but there was nothing for that. “Hotaru’s doing well, but Chiaki-san’s… she’s not gonna last another year, Kūkaku. And she’s the heart of that whole ward now.” He set the bottle back down after a liberal pour and took up the dish instead. 

Kūkaku wrapped her fingers around the neck and lifted it back to her cup. “Yeah. That’s what I figured. She wouldn’t take any money when I went to see her, either. Asked me to get it to her boys instead.”

Isshin grimaced. “You think things would have been like this if we’d never—”

“Don't.” Kūkaku shook her head. “Don’t think like that. They chose their path. Stickin’ with us even through all that… they knew it was going to have consequences. And you were a _kid_ , Isshin. None of that shit was your fault.”

Isshin didn’t understand _fault_ anymore, anyway. Sometimes he found himself wanting to be blamed for things. Or punished for them in some way that wasn’t… this endless suspension of everything. His life. The nice thing about punishment was that it had a definite length. And once it was over, it was over. 

He could have dealt with punishment. 

“You’re not thinking about Chiaki anymore,” Kūkaku observed, eyeing him over the rim of her cup. 

“No,” he admitted. “I’m not.” He didn’t really want to talk about his thoughts, though, so he changed the topic instead. “Where’s Ganju at?” He dusted off the knee of his hakama, leaving a darker streak against the light layer of dirt. Lucky for him, Kūkaku wasn’t the type to give a damn; she was covered in charcoal and grease half the time when they met like this.

She rolled her eyes. “’Patrol.’” Skepticism oozed from the word.

Isshin furrowed his brows. “He’s still running with that gang?”

“Yep.” She polished off the sake, then set the cup down, leaning back on her hand instead. “I guess I can’t blame him. No one trusts the shinigami to do anything useful even this far out. And if you wanna keep the really ugly shit from creeping into your district, what do you do?”

He could see the logic, kind of. “Fend off the gangs with your own gang, I guess.”

“They’re a bunch of idiots and they’ve acted like it, but a few busted up windows and scuffles is a lot better than being under the thumb of the Kurote or something.” Kūkaku shrugged. “Not much the likes of us can do anymore, huh?”

Isshin dropped his eyes to the tatami. She wasn’t wrong, really. He’d used to think it was pretty inevitable; even in the living world, things could get pretty bad in the same way. But still—it wasn’t _this_. 

Even so, he couldn’t help but balk at the idea of just _agreeing_ there. He’d never been that kind of person. Not until recently, maybe. It wasn’t the kind of captain he’d been, that was for sure. Not the kind of husband he’d been. He’d tried not to let his daughters get crushed under the feeling of inevitability, either; but maybe he’d forgotten to protect himself from it. 

Forgotten how to fight it.

* * *

He didn’t sleep well anymore. 

Day by day, the intervals between the thoughts of Masaki and Ichigo, and thoughts of the fight with Grand Fisher, got longer. Day by day, the thoughts themselves got a little more manageable. But there was something about the quiet at night that made them harder to cope with, and at the same time harder to escape. Sleeping was basically impossible, unless he wanted to watch himself kill them over and over again. Not the Hollow and the illusion—his wife and son. 

Sometimes the images changed. So he was killing his daughters instead. Or Rangiku and Tōshirō. Or his cousins, or his friends. 

Isshin knew he was processing the trauma. That nothing like this was infinite. That any wound healed with time, or at least scabbed over and scarred enough that it didn't bleed anymore. Even the wounds that were psychological. That someday, maybe, eventually, he’d be able to sleep again. 

It was pretty cold comfort, really. 

He padded quietly through his house, heading downstairs to the dark kitchen and opening up the fridge. Several containers with meals ready to eat were stacked on the left side; Ishida brought them by every week or so in case Yuzu didn’t want to cook. It was good of him, but Isshin knew the type: he wouldn’t exactly want to hear that stated directly. Bypassing those, he considered the fruit for a second before shaking his head and closing the door back over. A glass of water would do for now. 

Once he had it, he settled on one of the cushions in the living room, putting his back to the wall and not bothering with the lights. He closed his eyes and tried to relax, instinctively reaching for the reiatsu signatures in the house. Karin and Yuzu were in their room, Rangiku in the guest room. No overnight patients this time, which gave him no one he could justify checking on. Still, as long as he stayed awake, he’d know they were all still really here. Not dead like he’d dream them. 

The water tasted stale even though he knew better; he set the glass down on the table in front of his knees and sighed. The cabinet on the opposite wall had glass doors—even in the dark, he could glimpse what was inside. He’d known the contents by heart for a long time. Medical textbooks from Ryūken’s collection, because Ryūken sometimes liked to pretend that their profession was the only thing they’d shared, and Isshin let him. Family photos by the dozen from his years in the living world, with all of them. Drawings Ichigo had done in elementary school, Karin’s soccer trophies, Yuzu’s album of pressed flowers. The placard that used to be in front of their house—the one that just said ‘Kurosaki.’ 

Karin and Yuzu’s offer letters, and Ishida’s, too, because there wasn’t anyone else to keep them for him right now. To be proud of him in that way. So Isshin did it, putting the letter right next to the ones for his daughters. There were things in there from others, too: the bottle his celebratory sake had come in the day he made captain. A small ice sculpture Rangiku had kept from melting with a kidō trick and given to him on the sly. Tōshirō had really liked making dragons when he was a kid. 

It was a lot of life, but he’d put it all in a cabinet and kept it there. Like it was complete already, or at least done. For a long time, until the letters, he hadn’t even added anything. He wondered if he’d be ready to add things again, eventually, or if he was really as stuck as he felt. 

_A pain that must end_ , he’d thought that day. 

_All pain ends_ , he’d think in anyone else’s case.

But his?

Isshin wasn’t so sure about that anymore. 

“Dad?” 

Yuzu’s voice drew his attention. She was standing at the bottom of the stairs, rubbing the sleep from her eyes. 

“Hey, kiddo,” he answered, not much above a whisper. 

She took a couple steps towards him. “What are you doing?”

He tried for a smile. “Nothing much. I couldn’t sleep, is all. Is everything okay?”

Yuzu pursed her lips. She was studying his face, and from the look on hers, he knew his smile had failed to appear. “I couldn’t sleep, either,” she admitted. 

Isshin patted the ground next to him. Yuzu did smile, just barely, and crossed the rest of the distance, taking a seat and tucking herself against his left side. Isshin let his arm fall over her shoulders and rubbed her bicep with his hand, calluses sliding over her cotton sleeve. “Bad dream?” he asked.

She shook her head, something he felt just as much as he saw it. “No. I just… can’t get to sleep. My thoughts won’t slow down.”

Isshin hummed, offering Yuzu the glass of water. She accepted, sipping a few times before setting it back down. 

“It gets kind of hot in there, most nights,” she informed him quietly. “When Karin has nightmares, it’s… I feel like I don’t want to sleep in case I miss one. Miss being there if she needs someone.”

With a sigh, he pulled her in a little closer, feeling her arms wind around him and hold tightly. Sometimes he missed when all their problems had been the ones their dad could easily solve for them. When their nightmares hadn’t been any worse than being chased by formless monsters. When they still believed he could keep all those things away just because he was their dad, and that was close enough to being invincible. 

But he also knew that the women they were now would be able to chase away their own monsters, eventually—even though the monsters were worse. Even though they had faces and names and a terrifying, solid reality. They were strong enough for it, and had plenty of people to support them. That was better, even if sometimes it didn’t feel that way. 

Yuzu’s hair was soft under his fingers; Isshin carded them through the strands. “That’s good of you, Zuzu,” he said, tucking a piece behind her ear. “But don’t forget to look after yourself, too, okay?”

“Okay.”

Silence followed, and at some point, Isshin drifted off after all. He woke only once more, when a second body curled into his right side. He made room for Karin, too, back still to the living room wall, and then sank again into sleep.

* * *

Kyōraku leaned back on his hands, legs draping over the side of the engawa, and tilted his head back a bit to make eye contact with Isshin. 

“I know you’ve got a life here, but we could really use your help.”

He had a still life. 

Going back would definitely get it moving again.

Isshin wasn’t honestly sure he was ready for that, but it might be that he never _felt_ ready at all. Karin, Yuzu, and Rangiku were all returning to the Gotei. Even after all they’d been through. 

In a way, he knew it was where he belonged. It was where he’d always belonged. Where his fallen house didn’t condemn him. Where he could feel like he was really _doing_ something again. Maybe if he went back, he’d reach a day when the thoughts and dreams he had didn’t hurt anymore. He could… grow new things, in himself. And they’d be pale and warped for a while like Rukongai radishes, but they might not have to be forever. 

“Ninth, you said?”

“That was the plan.”

Isshin nodded. “I guess I’ll be closing up the clinic, then.”

Kyōraku made a humming noise that was hard to read exactly. “No need to rush. Take your time and get your things in order. We’ll worry about the rest then.”

Day by day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Term Dictionary_ :
> 
>  _Sakahone_ – 逆骨 – “Reverse Bone.” The seventy-sixth district of the Rukongai. In canon, Rukongai is further divided into north, south, etc. Each of those four cardinal directions has 80 districts. I’m doing it a little differently: the districts are concentric circles, with the outer ones being much larger as a result, though there are only 80 in total. Each district is further divided into wards, which are roughly equal areas, meaning that inner districts have fewer wards. So Sakahone is huge, has a lot of wards, and is extremely poor, being only four districts back from the very outskirts of Rukongai. Worth noting is that even the small districts have both settled and unsettled areas, just like the Seireitei itself. Given how many people this area has to contain, it’s gotta be pretty massive.
> 
>  _Shizuen_ – 静淵 – “Quiet Abyss.” Abyss here is taken in the sense of ‘very deep water.’ The name of Hotaru Sugitani’s shikai.
> 
>  _Kurote_ – 黒手 – “Black Hand.” In this AU, an organized crime syndicate that flourishes in the middle districts of the Rukongai. Given that there seems to be no active centralized government aside from C46 and the noble families, and that there’s just no way 6,000 shinigami (plus people working for said families) could regularly patrol even a small fraction of Rukongai when they also have the rest of their jobs to do (konsō, fighting Hollows, etc.). Thus, it made sense to me that something extralegal would fill the power vacuum. In this case, gangs/organized crime. Ganju runs his own gang in an attempt to keep the particularly nasty ones out of his ward. Other wards are occasionally under the protection of someone with enough clout to make it safer in their areas, like Chiaki, but for the most part, local leadership is pretty easily overwhelmed without support.


	3. Keeping Flowers in Full Bloom

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> * * *
> 
> The might that shaped itself through storm and stress  
> In chaos, here is lulled in breathing sweet;  
> Under the long brown ridge in gentleness  
> Its fierce old pulses beat.  
>   
> -Æ (George William Russell)
> 
> * * *

Yuzu’s feet pressed into the damp soil of her inner world; she curled her toes around the cool loam and pursed her lips. From above, the rain fell steadily, plastering her hair to her head and sliding beneath the collar of her sleeping yukata to slither down the length of her arms, gliding over her fingers until gravity cast it from her as surely as the march of time. 

_More_ surely—considering how time seemed to warp and twist here, until she wasn’t certain if minutes had passed in the outside world or hours. 

Hazel eyes narrowed, contemplating her unwelcome guest. 

Perhaps the most troubling thing about his presence was that he, too, was damp from the rain, the heaviness of his white jacket preventing the color from fading too much under the steady fall of water. He smiled back at her, unperturbed by the flecks of moisture on his glasses or the way his hair was curling against his nape. 

Sōsuke Aizen should not be so integrated with _her_ world. 

This would, she felt, be easier if he were aloof from it, a dry phantasm unaffected by the conditions here—an obvious intruder. Or even if he looked as she remembered him. But though he wore the black-lined uniform that had been commonplace in Las Noches, the square-framed spectacles and almost-shaggy hair were different. More in keeping with what she’d been told he disguised himself with during his time in Soul Society. The slightly doleful aspect it all lent him unsettled her. 

It was much too human. 

“But you acknowledged it, didn’t you?” he asked, smiling slightly. “That I _am_ human. As human as you. Not that I find the characterization particularly flattering, but this is _your_ world, I suppose.”

He might not be a god here.

But he wasn’t a monster, either.

She didn’t answer him immediately, frustrated by the fact that ignoring him entirely was impossible. Some bone-deep courtesy of hers didn’t allow it. Or maybe it was the curiosity, or the danger. There were a lot of good reasons not to ignore him—the trouble was, she had no idea what to do instead. 

With a glance over her shoulder, Yuzu made eye contact with Hasuhime. “What’s he doing here?” she asked, hoping the spirit would have some answer she did not. 

But the woman in her lovely furisode only pinched her immaculate, petal-pink lips and shook her head. She didn’t know either, then. 

Yuzu returned her attention to Aizen. Or the apparition of him that shouldn’t be here. Surely it had something to do with the real him—not that Yuzu had the faintest idea what. He was crouching, now, reaching out with one hand to trace the slightly-wilted petals of a yellow freesia. His expression suggested a distinct interest; she’d been under the gaze before, but now the object of inspection seemed to be her inner world as a whole. 

Her chest was tight; Yuzu recognized the feeling as wariness, flavored with the sharper taste of bile on the back of her tongue. She swallowed. 

“I did,” she said, finally answering his earlier question. It had probably been rhetorical, but if this… _apparition_ was appearing in her inner world, then it was likely that engaging with him somehow was the only way to figure everything out. “But I never invited you in here.”

It felt like a violation—moreso the longer she contemplated what it really meant. No one else had ever seen this place. They were in the deepest part of _her_ , and she didn’t want _him_ anywhere near it.

Aizen placed his hands on his knees and stood, not dignifying that comment with a response. Instead, he crossed over the little arched bridge that led to the center island. Yuzu, almost against her better judgement, followed him. 

“Now this is interesting.” He’d folded his arms into his sleeves; now he was looking up at the tree, head tilted and water rolling down his jaw and neck. 

She knew what he saw—the tree was still desiccated, still black and lifeless. Yuzu herself had wondered more than once about what that could possibly mean. There was nothing about anyone’s inner world that wasn’t meaningful somehow; and this was central in hers. She’d faced what it meant that her garden was half-dead—she needed to cultivate new things in it. 

But trees didn’t just come back to life. Hasuhime said it was dormant, not dead; but then she also had no idea what had made it so or even what kind of tree it was. 

“Has something died in you, Yuzu?” He said it with an almost-mocking lilt, the words edged with derision. 

Yuzu couldn’t decide _how_ she knew it, but she _did_ know that the scorn wasn’t exactly aimed at her. To be sure, he wanted to make her feel like less than him—that was par for their interactions thus far. But that rage that sat just beneath the menacing quiet of him… that was directed at something much older and larger than she was. 

She lifted her head; the change in angle shifted the trajectory of the water on her skin. Several fat drops fell from the very point of her chin onto the ground below. “Not because of you.”

His smile widened; even the changes in his appearance couldn’t minimize the menace of it. “No? But so much of your life has been _because of me_. I was choosing its course before we ever met. Before you existed.”

Stepping away from the tree, he brushed past her, heading back towards the front of the garden and the attached building. Hasuhime tracked his progress with narrowed eyes; understandably, the spirit was not any happier about having her domain invaded than Yuzu was. For his part, Aizen merely tilted his chin down in her general direction as he stepped up onto the engawa. Yuzu grimaced and followed, dripping onto the polished wood even as the patter of rain on her head and shoulders stopped.

Unfolding his arms, he laid a palm flat on the door. Clear surprise flickered over his face, for a moment, resettling into amusement as he turned to glance at her over his shoulder. His eyes were difficult to read behind the distortion of droplets, but the curl to his mouth was obvious enough. 

“You can’t get through here yet.”

Yuzu felt her jaw tighten. “What are you doing here?”

She didn’t much feel like discussing the intricacies of this place with him, even if the tone of voice he used suggested knowledge she might want to have. She wouldn’t be getting it from him. 

He hummed, soft and contemplative, lifting his shoulders. “Perhaps you should ask me. The actual me.”

She frowned, feeling the expression etch itself into her face. “The actual you is in a solitary confinement cell on the lowest levels of the Central Great Underground.”

He arched an eyebrow at her—the precise halfway point between disdain and curiosity. “Of all the obstacles before you, _that’s_ the one you’re stymied by? How disappointing.”

She took a half-step forward. “You—”

How that sentence would have ended—and Yuzu wasn’t entirely sure—she never got the chance to find out. Consciousness pulled at her, and knowledge that she was _uncomfortable_. Heat was prickling at her skin, sweat running the trails rainwater had in her dreams.

_Karin._

Her own conundrum could wait, for now.

* * *

Yuzu sank into one of the chairs at the nurse’s station. Technically, it was meant for a single nurse, but they’d pulled two more chairs to it for now. With both her and Karin here, as well as Matsumoto-san, dad had a lot more help than usual. He was away today, leaving her to act as doctor, mostly, since she was the one with the healing experience. 

Of course, most of the people who came in had colds or minor injuries, which didn’t require any particular expertise beyond what most every shinigami learned about first aid at Shin’ō. So it was mostly an empty distinction.

Pulling the nearest clipboard towards her, Yuzu added the forms she’d just filled out to it, rolling to the very old computer console at one corner of the desk and hitting ‘enter’ on the keyboard a few times to wake it up. Her last patient had been completely new to the clinic; while the Rukongai did not have anything like health insurance, her dad still liked to keep track of the people who came through the clinic and what their problems were. Also how they’d paid, which was usually money but sometimes had to be things like maintenance or yard work on the property. Not everyone had enough stashed away to deal with unexpected expenses—Yuzu was very conscious of how nice her salary was. Not extravagant, by any means, but enough that she could tuck away a little each time she was paid.

She still couldn’t comprehend the fabulous wealth of some of the people who lived in the Seireitei, though. Presumably extended lifespan made it easier for some of them, but not everyone in there had the reiryoku for that. Most of it was inheritance, she was sure. 

Entering the new patient’s name, she glanced to her side. Matsumoto-san was working at some forms, too—an exam report, it looked like. Yuzu knew that, like Karin, her sleep was restless at best. It was less clear what the reasons were, but she didn’t pry. Lots of people had lost something or someone of importance during the war; it was not at all hard to believe that Matsumoto-san was among them.

Still, not wanting to pry was a very different thing from not wanting to help. Yuzu’s eyes moved down the form; she blinked. 

“Oh, um, Rangiku-san, you don’t have to do the whole medical history on Shota-kun. He’s been in a few times before. He just has a different last name now; his mother married.” Yuzu stood, crossing to the filing cabinet and pulling the third drawer open. Flicking her fingers over each folder, she meandered back to the old one for the little boy and extracted it. “Just some new notes on what he came in for this time would be plenty.”

She held the file out; Matsumoto—who didn’t like to be called that, Yuzu knew—lifted her head and reached out to take it.

“Thanks, Yuzu-chan. Should I change the family name and put it in the right spot?”

“That would be really helpful—thank you.” Yuzu smiled and went back to her chair. 

She’d been tapping away at the keys again for a few minutes when Matsumoto spoke to her again. “This actually isn’t all that different from doing division work.”

Yuzu smiled a little wider and shook her head. “Not really, no. Especially Fourth Division work. These forms are pretty much exactly the same.”

The door to the waiting room opened; Karin shuffled in with an armful of lunch containers. Plopping into the empty chair, she handed one of the bento to Yuzu and another to Matsumoto before opening the last one. “Chopsticks are in the boxes already,” she said, pointing to the narrow opening at the side of her top layer. 

Since Yuzu already knew that, she was probably saying it for the benefit of their guest. 

“Oh, do I get to try one of Yuzu-chan’s famous bento?” Matsumoto asked, peeling back the lid of hers with obvious curiosity. 

Yuzu felt her mouth pull to the side. “I don’t think they’re famous,” she pointed out, feeling a twinge of embarrassment. The warmth to her cheeks went with; she didn’t blush half as darkly-red as Karin, but she did it a lot more often. Matsumoto had been to their house for dinner before, so she wasn’t quite sure what the big deal was about lunch.

“Are you kidding? Renji loves these. So does Rukia-chan.” Fishing her chopsticks out of their slot, Matsumoto dug in. It seemed like she’d barely swallowed before she was speaking again. “And the rumors are true—that is delicious.” She grinned broadly; the edges were a little shaky, but the expression read as genuine. It lit up her whole face.

“Monkey only knows that because he steals my food,” Karin grumbled, poking at her rice for a second. It was sticky enough that she left a hole in it. 

“Thank you,” Yuzu said, addressing herself to Matsumoto. “I’ll be sure to make you one tomorrow, too.” It wasn’t like it was any extra trouble, really. 

“I think I figured out how Isshin managed to not lose any body mass,” the other woman added. “Was he secretly practicing with his sword too?” She contemplated her own question for a second. 

“Who, him? He’s way too lazy for that,” Karin said, shoveling another clump of rice and mushrooms into her mouth. 

She was… possibly right about that, though it did get Yuzu thinking. Most shinigami abilities relied much more on reiatsu than actual conditioning, but as she’d painfully learned in hohō class at the academy, conditioning made _applying_ reiatsu in certain ways a lot less taxing. Maybe he _had_ been keeping up with some kind of training regimen over the years that they didn’t know about. 

“Did he look the same, before—um.” She wasn’t really sure how to finish that in a way that wouldn’t be even more awkward than not finishing it. 

Matsumoto was conspicuously quiet for a moment, but then she straightened a bit where she sat. “Sort of. Didn’t have the beard back then, and I guess he looked a little younger. But not that different.” 

Curiosity niggled at her, but Yuzu was cautious about asking anything else. She didn’t know all the details, exactly, but Karin had filled her in on the broad strokes. It seemed like a sensitive topic to touch; she picked up her own utensils only then. The pickled plum had come out particularly well, if the sharp tang in the aroma of it was anything to go by. 

“Hitsugaya said he basically fucked you guys over by going to the living world. Seems like you all were pretty close back then.” Karin, of course, was unlikely to hide what she was thinking. 

Yuzu resisted the urge to sigh softly. 

Matsumoto didn’t seem to take it badly, though, just chewing over her lunch thoughtfully and then swallowing. “He was… well, don’t tell either of them I told you this, but he was absolutely Tōshirō’s hero.” Nostalgia, or something like it, turned her mouth at the corner; her eyes weren’t looking at anything in the room anymore. 

“And for a Sabitsura brat like me…” She paused, a line appearing between her brows. Her eyes snapped back into focus, flicking between Karin and Yuzu. “Safety. He was safety.”

Yuzu could understand that. Her dad had been safety to her for a long time, too. Part of that was just because he was her dad, but more than a little had to do with his personality in general, too. He had a warmth to him, a comfort and sense of ease. Something familiar and homey. 

“Sabitsura…” Karin echoed, frowning. “That’s pretty far out there.” 

Everyone knew that most families were found ones, out there, when they existed at all. The souls that arrived in some other way than being born to other souls usually did so further away from the Seireitei.

Matsumoto interpreted it as an oblique question, lifting her shoulders. “I didn’t have any family before the two of them. Except, well—” she fell silent, her face contorting in a way that meant the discussion had touched a raw nerve. 

Yuzu sought to change the topic. “So tell us more about the Tenth. You were dad’s fukutaichō, right?” It seemed to be a relatively safe topic by comparison. 

Matsumoto cleared her throat, collecting herself for a moment before nodding. “I was. Of course Isshin never did any work, so that fell to us…”

* * *

The Fourth Division’s complex was actually a bit larger than the standard space allotment for divisional grounds, but that was because they needed to fit a hospital and several auxiliary medical buildings on it in addition to the same barracks and mess and administrative buildings and training areas as the others had. 

The hospital itself was significantly larger than the segment of it they kept in operation most of the time; with the battle and its aftermath, Yuzu understood why. They’d opened up all the extra wings, then, and the duty rotations had lengthened and become more frequent even for the unseated officers who normally handled things like laundry. 

If she hadn’t been among the injured, she’d have been among them. Yuzu had found that—laying on her narrow mattress and fretting about the conditions of her family and friends—she’d much rather be wearing herself out with the rest of the Fourth and at least _knowing_ how everyone was doing. Maybe being able to do something about it. 

But even though she was among the first to recover from her injuries, Unohana-taichō had forbidden her from working anywhere but the kitchen. She hadn’t understood why—she was healed and knew how to heal others—until the notice had come from the Sōtaichō that she was being placed on leave. 

She couldn’t be one of the healers if she was still one of the patients. 

And today, she was visiting the Fourth as a patient, even if no one really acknowledged it that way. 

Pushing open the glass door, Yuzu bypassed the reception area and waiting room; she still had those rights, after all. Instead, she headed back for the central hub that was the nurses’ station. Much larger than the one in her dad’s clinic, and sort of deceptively named, since just about everyone stopped here to drop off, pick up, or log information of some kind. 

This early in the morning, things were still slow; not unexpectedly, Hanatarō was the supervising officer. He looked like he was preparing the materials for Unohana-taichō, Isane-san, and Iemura-san, which was usually her job at this time. 

Sensing her approach, Hanatarō glanced up, expression flickering with surprise for all of half a second before he smiled. “Yuzu-san. It’s good to see you.”

She offered an echo of the expression. “You, too, Hanatarō-san.” Her eyes fell to the slim touchscreen he’d braced against one arm, fingers poised over the surface. “You’re doing both of our jobs for now, then?” It seemed like a lot to demand of one person.

Hanatarō shook his head slightly. “It’s not so bad. Mostly I just prepare and process appointments and notes, then do what I normally do. Occasionally, taichō will ask me to assist, but only when I’m not busy, so it works out fine. You don’t need to worry.”

Yuzu didn’t need to wonder how Hanatarō knew she was worrying. He was basically the same way, and it hadn’t taken them long to discover this fact about each other. She’d always catch him looking at doors where surgery or some other complicated procedure was going on and furrowing his brows. Or sometimes sneaking extra gelatin cups onto the trays for younger patients, or offering to do the last few pieces of paperwork by himself so someone else could go home earlier. There were countless examples like that. 

“Okay,” she said. They both knew that even if she didn't need to, she would. “But that does mean you have to take this.” Sliding her satchel off her shoulder, Yuzu reached inside and pulled out a bento box. She’d made an extra this morning, for whomever her replacement turned out to be. Probably she’d subconsciously known it would be Hanatarō, because she’d included tamagoyaki, which she didn’t make that often because Karin didn’t like it. Hanatarō had mentioned that he did, though. 

He looked surprised again, but accepted the box nevertheless. “You’ve got a deal, Yuzu-san.” Setting both the bento and the tablet on the counter, he leaned over and looked down the hall. “By the way, um, I think taichō’s in her office. If you were looking for her.”

With a slight grimace, Yuzu nodded. “I should probably go. It’s about time—she’s expecting me.”

With a final wave to Hanatarō, she headed down the hallway, turning when she came to the stairwell. Unohana-taichō’s office was on the top floor of the hospital, and even if she didn’t use it for much but lunch break, it was also where Yuzu went on the days her captain asked her to come in. 

Before the war, she’d almost gotten used to being in there every day. Now, though—it wasn’t anything specific that Unohana-taichō was doing, or really anything she was doing at all, but the sense of familiarity had… gone away. Everything felt like that now. It was hard to believe forty days could change a person so much; but, if Aizen’s invasion of her inner world was anything to go by, then maybe it had more to do with who the forty days had been _with_ than anything. 

Stopping just outside the door, Yuzu raised her hand to knock, then paused. Pulling in a deep breath and holding it for several seconds, she let it back out slowly through her nose, then rapped her knuckles smartly against the doorframe. Taichō never had to say anything specific to somehow convey that squeamishness was not something she particularly appreciated in her subordinates. 

“You may enter.” The captain’s voice drifted through the door, light and gentle as it always was. 

Yuzu slid the door open and stepped in, sliding it closed behind her again without being asked. Unohana-taichō was hard at work behind her desk, it seemed, moving through paperwork with the calm efficiency of someone who’d been doing it long enough to know all the forms upside down and backwards. She set it aside with a slight rustle when Yuzu entered.

Instead of speaking across the desk, both of them moved to the low table the captain used for lunch, where a pot of tea already waited, a pale curl of steam wafting from the spout. Yuzu poured, then sat back in seiza on the cushions, lifting her cup with both hands and holding it gingerly in front of her. 

But it was Unohana-taichō who spoke first. “How are you finding your leave, Kurosaki-kun?”

Yuzu wasn’t exactly sure how to answer. Her lips parted; she sealed them closed again, setting her teacup down untouched and clasping her ceramic-warmed hands in her lap. There was a hangnail on her left index finger—smoothing over it repeatedly with her right thumb produced a little twinge each time. “I don’t really know what to say, taichō. I guess it’s… fine.”

Unohana tilted her head, but took a slow sip of her tea before she replied. The room was slowly perfumed by the scent of chamomile. “You find something dissatisfying?” Her tone left the words open for interpretation, conveying neither judgement nor a really clear sense of just how much she knew or had already guessed. 

It was difficult to respond to for exactly that reason. Yuzu thought it was entirely possible that her captain knew more about what was bothering her than _she_ did—and that the only brand new piece of information was dangerous to convey. What would she think, if she knew that Aizen had begun to appear when her ninth seat dreamed or meditated?

“No, just—” Yuzu sidestepped _that_ issue and tried to find the root of the rest of it. “I don’t know. It feels like… I’m restless. It’s hard to explain. I like working at dad’s clinic and helping the people there, but I can’t make myself forget about how _big_ everything is outside of it.”

The captain nodded slightly, her expression still unreadable as it had been for the first two such visits Yuzu had made since winter’s end. “Big how?”

Yuzu twisted her grip, feeling the contours of her second knuckle under her fingertips. She dropped her eyes to her hands, watching her skin turn white, then flush again when she released her hold. “There’s so much out there,” she said softly. “And pieces of me still out there, too. I don’t know if I’ll get them back. I don’t know if I _want_ them back.”

She could feel the weight of Unohana-taichō’s regard even if she couldn’t see it. “What pieces are those, Kurosaki-kun?” The sound of ceramic colliding softly with the table followed; she’d set her teacup down, too. 

“Lots of things, I guess.” Yuzu shook her head, reaching up to push back the strands of hair that dislodged when she did. Her hand lingered against the side of her neck; she could feel her pulse beneath her palm. “Maybe what I’m trying to say is that I don’t think I’m the same person I was before it happened. And I can’t decide if that’s a good thing or a bad thing.”

Silence pervaded not unlike the herbal scent, hanging over the both of them and the room itself for some amount of time Yuzu couldn’t quite keep track of.

“Perhaps,” Unohana said at last, “that remains to be seen. To be made.”

* * *

“Catch.”

Yuzu turned just in time to get her hands in front of her. The gently-lobbed cabbage fell right into them with a soft impact sound; she blinked down at it for a moment before turning her eyes up to Uryū. 

The little slant to the corner of his mouth was about as much smiling as he ever did. He shifted his bags of groceries back around so the weight was evenly distributed again, taking a few longer strides to catch up with her and walk at her side. “On your way home?”

She nodded. “Yes, actually. Are these for us?” Raising the cabbage to indicate what she was talking about, she nodded down at the other bags as well. 

“Most of them. I picked up a few things for myself also.” Of course, there were plenty of places to purchase food in the Seireitei, so she knew that if he was out in the Rukongai doing this, then the point had been to help _them_ out. 

Yuzu tossed the vegetable between her hands as they walked, smiling a little bit herself. “Do you want to stay for dinner tonight? I was going to make okonomiyaki—or something quick like that.”

Uryū pursed his lips. “I’m not sure I should,” he said at last. “I was planning to stay late at the division. There’s a lot of work I still need to do for the transition.” 

She’d known about his promotion—it was the kind of thing that rippled through their mutual social circle quite quickly, even before he’d told them personally. Yuzu was happy for him, but she had to hope that the late nights wouldn’t become too regular. 

“Well, it’s up to you,” she said, with some delicacy. “But I’d like to thank you, somehow, for looking out for us.” He’d done a lot of that. Not just since the war, either, though maybe it was most obvious now. Her eyes fell to the stone paving below their feet; she tucked the cabbage under her elbow. 

The rustle of cloth bags probably meant he was adjusting his glasses. “You don’t have to thank me for that,” he replied, more quietly now.

“Yes I do.” Yuzu stopped; he immediately did as well. She tilted her head up to meet his eyes. She felt—something. Some frustration building behind her own, making them hot and itchy. “You—you’ve done so much for me, and I don’t… haven’t…” A harsh breath escaped her; perhaps her talk with Unohana-taichō had left her more raw than she’d thought at first. 

Uryū clearly sensed her distress. His attention shifted; he was scanning the immediate area. “Here,” he said, gesturing over her shoulder with his chin. “Let’s just sit down for a minute.”

He’d spotted a park bench—they weren’t too far from the house, just skimming the edge of a public garden. Yuzu nodded slightly and moved to it, sitting and placing the cabbage on her lap, a hand resting at each side of it. Uryū divested himself of his bags, putting them at the side of the bench before taking the spot next to her. For a while, they were both silent; only a few other people passed the bench by, none of them paying much mind to its quiet occupants.

Yuzu used the time to try and get a grip on herself; she wasn’t even honestly sure where all this was _coming_ from. She was upset, but not _at_ anyone, and she felt uncertain about a lot of things and restless in a way she couldn’t name and _sad_ and _lonely_ , which was ridiculous because she had so many amazing friends and family members. 

It didn’t make any sense, but that had never stopped feelings before. 

“I’m sorry,” she said, pulling in a deep breath. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

In her periphery, she saw Uryū shake his head. “There’s nothing wrong with you, and I’m not accepting that apology. You don’t owe me any.”

She made an awkward little noise in the back of her throat and rotated the cabbage in her hands, following the pattern of white, webby veins on the leaves from bottom to top. Used to carry water once, but not since it had been severed from its roots. “I feel wrong,” she admitted. “Like I don’t fit in my life. And I feel like that’s so _terrible_ because you and everyone else did all of those things just to bring me back. You almost _died_ —and it was my _fault_ —and I can’t even be _grateful_ in the right way because I don’t know how I feel about anything anymore.” The sting in her eyes got worse; green and white started to blur together in her vision. Her breath came out unsteadily, a tremor she couldn’t force away.

It wasn’t that she wanted to go back to being Aizen’s captive or anything. But—

The thought stopped itself, or she stopped it. Or maybe it was Uryū putting his hand on her shoulder that did it. Yuzu couldn’t be sure. A gentle pressure tugged her closer; Yuzu yielded to it readily, letting her head rest against the crook of his shoulder. He was so _spare_ , even with the muscle their training had given them all; he’d always be thin and sharply-angled. Just like she suspected she’d always be small and a little soft.

“Nothing that happened was your fault,” he said, sounding quite sure of it. “You did what you had to do to survive, and that means that your feelings got caught up in all of it. No one who understands that could blame you for being confused, or conflicted, or any of that. I wasn’t upset with you for healing someone who tried to kill me, and I’m not upset with you now.”

A lump built in her throat as he spoke; she only just barely managed to swallow past it. It felt constricting, like she couldn’t breathe. Yuzu squeezed her eyes shut and turned her face further in towards him. Her forehead pressed hard against the fabric over his collarbone. She couldn’t stand the secret anymore. It was too big for her to carry by herself. 

“He’s in my head, Uryū.” Her voice cracked and broke. “Aizen. He’s in my inner world, and I can’t make him go away.”

She braced herself for the reaction, her entire body tensing and coiling to spring. But Uryū—reserved Uryū who didn’t often touch people and who was probably already profoundly uncomfortable trying to hold her together while she not-quite-cried into his chest—just shifted his hold, splaying the fingers of one hand over her back and setting the other at the crown of her head. He stroked down the length of her hair, then did it again until it was repetitive, regular. Steady. 

The cabbage rolled off her lap and onto the ground; Yuzu grabbed the sides of his uniform in her fists and held on for dear life. 

Saying it out loud made it real. Like a dam had been broken, fear and misery welled in her chest, hitching her thin, wheezy breath in her throat. He was supposed to be gone. They were supposed to have won. 

So why was she so sure she could _feel_ him smirking at her, even now? In what sense was that a _victory_ for anyone but him? Why did the danger of him still seem so obvious?

Why couldn’t she stop shaking?

Yuzu lost track of how much time they spent like that. Uryū said things to her, she knew—things she recalled only as a hazy fuzz of softness, like being rolled in a blanket against the winter chill. It was funny, because his diction was usually precise and crisp, cool and sharp. It was odd that she should find it warm and indistinct instead. 

When she finally relinquished her death-grip on him, she was more composed. But not any better. Just—calmer. And just for now. Maybe that was all she was getting from here on out. 

By silent consensus, they gathered up the groceries and returned home. Uryū would never tell anyone her secret; she was already feeling bad for burdening him with it. He wouldn’t call it that, though, and maybe she didn’t have to, either. Maybe time would do her the kindness of distance, and all of this would seem more bearable. Maybe she could rearrange her life so that she fit in it again, and so did all the people she loved. 

Maybe.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Term Dictionary_ :
> 
>  _Sabitsura_ –錆面 – “Rusted Face.” The sixty-fourth district of Rukongai, and where Rangiku and Gin grew up.


	4. Looking for Answers

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> * * *
> 
> I sing the will to love:  
>  the will that carves the will to live,  
>  the will that saps the will to hurt,  
>  the will that kills the will to die;  
>  the will that made and keeps you warm,  
>  the will that points your eyes ahead,  
>  the will that makes you give, not get,  
>  a give and get that tell us what you are:  
>  how much a god, how much a human.  
>  I call on you to live the will to love.  
>    
>  -Alfred Kreymborg
> 
> * * *

“Come on in, Ishida-kun. Close the door, please.”

Uryū reached back, sliding the wood panel shut behind him, but his eyes did not leave the Sōtaichō. Kyōraku had just excused Ise-san, which apparently meant that it was his turn to hear whatever news the visit was designed to convey. 

It has to be something important, or he’d have used a jigokuchō instead of appearing personally. But the fact that he’d come here instead of summoning them to the First suggested it was also at least somewhat personal in nature. Then again, Kyōraku was always making things a bit more personal in nature. He was _capable_ of adopting a businesslike attitude, Uryū was sure. He just chose not to. 

“Sōtaichō.” His rather unconventional method of interrupting the evening’s work was hardly unexpected, but it did make the rote formalities a little more difficult to observe. Uryū didn’t actually hate the rote formalities, somewhat to his own surprise. Perhaps it was something about the structure of them. The stability. 

Kyōraku allowed them, too, in a sense. Poked fun at them, sometimes insisted they weren’t necessary, but never actually did anything to prevent their use. Such as now, when he dipped his chin with a wry expression and did not gesture for Uryū to sit. For his own part, though, he tipped his chair back onto the hind legs and laced his fingers together over his abdomen. “So how’s the hero of the hour?” The words were light, and maybe a couple of years ago, they would have seemed more mocking than anything. 

There was something less than completely genuine about them, but Uryū knew that wasn’t directed at him. He still frowned at the captain. “Which hour was that? I must have missed it.”

Kyōraku’s smile was lopsided. “For the best, I think.” He paused. “But you must have noticed that people are looking at you differently now.”

It was hard to miss. It wasn’t as though Uryū had suddenly gone from _that Quincy_ to some kind of—well, _hero_ was really the word at issue, poorly as it tasted. But there was a difference. Some degree of it in the Eighth, where he’d gone from one of the officers to _one of the people who’d fought Aizen_. That was starting to simmer down, thankfully, as he went back to paperwork and patrol with the rest of them. 

Elsewhere, though—Uryū felt like he walked around with a permanent itch between his shoulderblades. The burning feeling of being watched. 

“I think I’d prefer the way it was,” he said flatly.

Kyōraku laughed at that, a chuckle with a faint dark edge to it. “Too late,” he replied, one thick brow arching as if in mild chiding. “Perhaps you should have thought about that before you distinguished yourself.” It was a joke. It had to be—the suggestion that he ought to consider his reputation before doing what was absolutely necessary was too absurd to be taken seriously.

The thought must have showed on his face. Kyōraku tempered his mirth, a faint smile the only remainder. “You’ll get used to it. You can get used to a lot—it’s one of your strengths.”

Uryū furrowed his brows, mouth flattening into a near-straight line. “If you say so.”

Kyōraku hummed, letting the chair fall just enough that its front legs brushed the tatami before rocking it back again. “Regardless of how you think of it, though, your service was meritorious. That’s the word that kept showing up in the reports, by the way. Some of them were a little different—there’s a few _distinguisheds_ and _commendables_ , and then also some _saved my lifes_ —but the point is you’ve won yourself more than a little support. That kind of thing usually comes with all sorts of formal nonsense: awards, official commendation, so on.” 

There was a _thud_ as the chair hit ground more decisively. “You’re welcome to those things if you want them. I’d enjoy annoying the Central 46 by giving you all of it in the most showy, official way possible, and I usually hate official things.” 

Frankly, half of that sounded like a nightmare. 

“But,” Kyōraku continued, “I think I’ll just note them all in your personnel file and promote you instead. If you don’t mind.”

* * *

“This is a pleasant surprise.” Ise-san blinked at the tray Uryū set down, halfway on the edge of his desk and halfway on the edge of hers. Steam still curled from the sticky rice, though passage from the mess to the office building had dislodged the formerly-neat arrangement of the utensils a bit. 

“I thought it unlikely that we’d be finished in time to make normal dinner hours,” he replied, settling back down at his chair. The two rectangular desks placed against one another made almost a square table of sorts, at which they sat across from each other. It was clearly a working arrangement, given the large stacks of paper in the intervening space. 

Evidence of the work spilled over, too: the whiteboard-on-wheels that Ise kept in the office was currently occupied by a neat grid, lines drawn on with the aid of a ruler. Names, places, and times were filled in with tiny, precise handwriting. 

She hummed, standing so she could reach forward and take the bowls with her meal in them, alongside a spoon and some chopsticks. “That was thoughtful of you, Ishida-san. Thank you.”

“Not at all, fukutaichō.”

That gave her a moment’s pause—a slight still in her motion before she finished the process of resettling into her chair. Her posture was noticeably better than most anyone’s, his own included. 

“I think that’s a title that will belong to you as well, quite soon.” The certitude in her tone could only mean Kyōraku had told her about it. 

Uryū dipped his chin in bare acknowledgement. He still wasn’t entirely sure how that was going to go, but he was confident that everything he’d learned from Ise-san was enough to qualify him for the more straightforward parts of the job, at least. Still…

“It’s difficult to imagine the division without you or Kyōraku-taichō,” he admitted. Even the time since the war had felt transitional. Liminal in a way that meant it didn’t really count. As though they were in holding pattern and waiting for things to return to normal. Only normal at the Eighth was so inextricably linked to the captain sleeping on the roof or teasing the officers and Ise-san diligently keeping everything running with an organizational aptitude that was frankly boggling. It was just the sort of steady humming undertone that kept everything else pinned down. 

As far as Uryū knew, none of the other divisions approached that kind of strange mix of almost ruthless efficiency in management and lightness of atmosphere. The routine never quite became automatic, because the captain was always finding a way to do the unexpected. But anyone could count on Ise-san to see to it that even those interruptions didn’t do any harm. It had sort of bothered Uryū at first, the flexibility required to maneuver around Kyōraku’s occasional random demand that the entire division take the day off and have a picnic outdoors or something like that. At least until he realized that the demands weren’t _random_ at all, but timed so as to interrupt the tension and stress that inevitably built up around a job like this. 

He could perhaps at least approximate some portion of Ise-san’s style of leadership, but that intuitiveness of the captain’s was quite possibly unique to him and also likely irreplaceable because of it. And for now at least, the division would have no captain at all, which meant no one to make up for the lack. No one but him.

Grimacing, he returned to his work. The form he pulled from the top of their shared stack gave him a moment’s pause. 

“The Rukongai patrol routes are changing?” to his knowledge, the last time they’d been adjusted was after Aizen defected, to lighten the burden on the divisions without taichō. But this looked to be the opposite. Both of the Eighth’s experienced leaders were leaving, and the patrols were being _increased_.

Ise pushed her glasses up her nose, inspecting the form upside down. “It’s not just ours,” she replied. “Every division is getting increased patrol duties. Kyōraku-sōtaichō wants us to be able to reach further areas in the Rukongai.”

Uryū frowned down at the form. “Is this really the time for that, though?” Not that he disapproved. Just… 

“I think,” she replied slowly, “that now is the time to help our members feel like they are accomplishing things. To make everyone feel useful.”

And the best way to make them feel that was to make it true. “That’s… straightforward, for him,” Uryū said, after a moment. 

“Well, it won’t necessarily seem that way to others.” Ise shrugged. “In any case, each division has only as many distinct patrols as they do officers capable of leading one, so the assignments shouldn’t be too troublesome. Just make sure to rotate the night duties.”

He rolled his eyes. “Right. Don’t want to interfere too much with anyone’s evening habits.” 

“Indeed.” Ise, a trace of wryness in the tilt of her mouth, looked back down at her paperwork. Her crisp, efficient brush-strokes resumed, and Uryū followed suit. 

After sketching out a rough patrol rotation, Uryū paused before affixing his name to the bottom of the document. “Ise-san… does it ever seem to you as though there aren’t enough shinigami for all the things we do?”

She paused in the act of lifting a small bite of food from her bowl. “In what sense?”

Uryū straightened in his seat, feeling a twinge where he’d gone stiff just beneath his shoulderblades. “I mean… konsō, patrol, keeping the Seireitei running, dealing with Hollows—it’s just interesting that we can never quite keep up with it. There aren’t enough of us, but at the same time, the number of souls with reiryoku remains steady.”

Ise pursed her lips. “I would contend that the problem has been exacerbated in the time you’ve been here, but your understanding of the situation is… not inaccurate. Why?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know. There’s just something wrong about it. If the goal is balance, then I’d expect our numbers to be equal to the task of preserving it.” Maybe that wasn’t a necessity, or he was looking at it the wrong way, but it was made stark by looking at numbers and shifts and districts this way. There just weren’t enough shinigami.

“Was it less pronounced when you joined?” 

She hummed, finishing her bite before responding. Poking a bit at the contents of her bowl, Ise lifted her shoulders. “I wish I could describe it with greater accuracy, but I was quite young when I first joined the Eighth. Well below regulation age, you understand. My memories are not the clearest until after what I would consider a major upheaval.”

It had to be the banishment of the Visored she was talking about. The first major play in Aizen’s strategy. “Can I ask how that came about?”

She arched both eyebrows. “My joining the Gotei 13?”

He nodded once.

“It’s not really the most interesting story,” she informed him, her tone caught between its usual crispness and something more—ruminative? “Certainly nothing so noteworthy as yours.”

Uryū huffed. “Thankfully, that’s not the threshold of interesting.”

Another tiny smile; Ise shifted in her seat and met his eyes. “The admission age for Shin’ō had no minimum or maximum back then,” she said. “And, well—I didn’t really have anywhere else to go. My mother had died, and I was in the care of distant relatives who felt as little connection to me as I did to them. I don’t remember exactly how the idea came about to send me there, but I certainly didn’t complain.” Her eyes fell; she resumed poking at her rice. 

“I completed the full six years without being able to so much as imprint on an asauchi.”

Uryū blinked. “Imprint? As in—”

“The test they now administer to hopefuls, yes. Were that the test back then, I’d not have been admitted at all. Each of the blades I touched or carried around, for however long a time, remained completely blank. I had reiatsu, certainly; it just doesn’t… leave an impression on asauchi.”

He’d never heard of something like that. He knew Ise didn’t carry a zanpakutō, but he’d always figured that she, like Yoruichi, _chose_ not to. He could even think of reasons why someone might make that choice, though he couldn’t imagine making it himself. Not anymore. 

“Anyway—that made me rather unsuited for the sort of top rankings in my class that would ensure I could choose my own division. And so I was assigned to the Eighth, and here I’ve been ever since.”

Uryū was quiet for a moment. Ise was not a very expressive person, but even the tiny clues in her behavior and tone of voice now were painting a picture of how she felt about all this. He cleared his throat, speaking in a way he hoped conveyed his confidence. 

“I’d say it’s foolish, then, that the asauchi imprinting is a vital part of the entrance requirements. If it had been back then, the Seireitei would lack someone important.”

Ise blinked at him, eyes wide before she remembered herself and her face smoothed out. “I—thank you, Ishida-san. It is not—thank you.”

“No need, Ise-fukutaichō. It’s been an honor to learn from you.”

* * *

Spring stole slowly over the Seireitei this year. The winter had been long, and colder than usual. 

But something about that made the first time Uryū and Rukia took lunch outside this season particularly pleasant. The temperature still wasn’t quite optimal; he had a feeling she was regretting her recent decision to switch to a short-sleeved shihakushō, even if the gloves helped a little. It didn’t escape him that they looked an awful lot like the ones Kuchiki-taichō wore. 

The river was flowing slowly, chunks of ice from farther upstream occasionally passing by, but they were small and fewer than even a week ago. The trees were just barely showing buds now, little pinpricks of pale green dotting the branches. 

Uryū hadn’t bothered to sort the food into two discrete sets—Rukia’s piracy of food, disguised as trading, was a predictable habit. It made more sense just to pack items by type and let her have at whatever she wanted. They made comfortable small-talk for a while, most of it revolving around their division activities and the rumors of upcoming personnel changes. It wasn’t long ago that Renji announced his promotion and asked Karin to be his lieutenant, but that wouldn’t be the only shakeup before things were done. 

Kyōraku-taichō had an unenviable task in front of him, to be sure. 

“Something on your mind? You’ve been kind of distracted.” Rukia lifted an eyebrow in his general direction, then popped a spear of cucumber into her mouth. The prompt for him to take over the talking portion of the conversation was clear enough. 

There was no point denying it. Or delaying it, for that matter. Reaching between the layers of his shihakushō, Uryu removed the badge that had previously belonged to Ise-fukutaichō, the character for the Eighth sitting solidly over the silhouette of a bird of paradise. 

“Remember when this was the other way around?”

Rukia’s eyes rounded with her surprise; setting aside her food, she leaned forward and picked up the badge, running her bare fingertips over the engraved surface. She tapped the outside curve of the number with a short nail and smiled. The expression was just a tilt to one side of her mouth, accompanied by a small furrow between her brows. 

“Yeah, I do. Maybe not quite the same, though.”

That was fair. When she held out the badge, he took it back, replacing it in the folds of his uniform. “…it’s a little similar,” he admitted. 

She blinked at him. “Worried about how you’re going to do?” Unsurprisingly, she hit the problem on the nose. 

Uryū exhaled in a controlled gust. “Somewhat, yes. It’s not—” he struggled for the words to explain. He didn’t fear he’d be inadequate to the daily tasks, or worry about his capabilities as a battlefield leader. He’d done enough paperwork and led enough patrols to understand that with work, the needed experience would come. But something else still gnawed at him, something he’d put aside in the face of necessity. 

“When Aizen was still a threat…” His eyes narrowed. “Something about this was easier. No—simpler.” 

Rukia tilted her head. Her silence was patient; working more slowly through her food, she shifted her eyes frequently back to his. 

“It made sense. What I was doing here.” That wasn’t quite right, either, but he knew of no better way to put it. 

With a soft sound in the back of her throat, Rukia set her utensils down again and leaned back a bit, bracing her weight on her hands. “You’re not sure if it’s home?” Her words were slow, delicate; despite her posture, there was a fine tension in her frame. What to make of that wasn’t clear.

Uryū shook his head decisively. “No. It is. I just—” A grimace overtook his features. The uneasiness was elusive, perhaps because he didn’t know its source. Not as precisely as he ought to. 

Rukia seemed to relax then, despite the lack of clarification. “I think maybe we just need to give it some time. I haven’t exactly felt quite right either lately; I think it’s just because everything’s changing so much so fast. If you think about it, we spent years preparing for the war, and no time at all preparing for any of this.” She shrugged. “I dunno that we _could_ have prepared for this.”

She had a point, and Uryū felt himself ease. Not completely, but enough that he didn’t feel quite so itchy underneath his own skin. “Maybe,” he conceded quietly. “In any case… I plan to accept. I thought I should tell you first.” It made a certain sort of sense, to his own way of thinking. It might have been Urahara and Yoruichi that set him down the path that had led him here, but Rukia was in some way the prime mover of it. The catalyst. 

Well, and also his best friend, he supposed. That had to count for something.

When she smiled this time, it was full, reaching up to her eyes and transforming the contours of her face into something softer. “I’m glad to hear it.”

* * *

“Go ahead and set that down there, Ishida-kun.” Urahara waved his fan in a vague direction, giving nothing more specific than that. 

Uryū figured that meant he really didn’t care, as he was unerringly precise when he wanted to be and generally irritatingly-lax otherwise. Hefting the crate with a soft grunt, he shifted a few feet to the right and set it down against the wall. It, like everything Urahara seemed to own, was more awkward to carry than outright heavy, though perhaps that was a fact of reiatsu more than actual kilograms. By this point, his memory of what _heavy_ had felt like was starting to blur a little, though sometimes he was still vaguely surprised by his own strength. 

Kurosaki-san set another down next to it, straightening and giving Uryū an easy half-smile. “I think that’s about all of them, actually.” Raising his voice a little, he turned to speak over his shoulder. “Anything else you need, Kisuke?”

“No, that’s all right. We can put it all away later.” Urahara slid the door to the outside of the new building closed, snapping his fan shut and tucking it away into his sleeve. 

“What the hell, Urahara? You could have told us that ten minutes ago.” Karin, half-inside a large box, pulled herself out and upright with a scowl. 

Renji plucked a piece of packing tape out of her hair carefully, letting it flutter back down into the box. “How’d you manage to get a new construction in the Fifth District, anyhow?” It was a relatively difficult thing to do; land in the lower-numbered districts was strictly controlled. Anyone trying to move closer to the Seireitei either had to wait for an existing structure to be made available or lean heavily on a name much more weighty than Urahara’s. 

“I have my methods,” the shopkeeper replied vaguely. An intentional nonanswer if Uryū had ever heard one. And he did. Frequently. Usually from Urahara. 

“Tea’s ready,” Yuzu called from the next room. 

Uryū and Renji exchanged a look, and both sort of shrugged. It wasn’t worth pressing about, probably. 

Following Karin into the back room, Uryū discovered that most of the others had already settled. Kurosaki-san, the twins, Renji, Rukia, and Ukitake-taichō had all appeared to help Urahara and Yoruichi move, along with Tessai and the kids, of course—but they had a separate building on the same plot. Probably so that there would be more space between them and whatever experiments Urahara wanted to run. Yoruichi was returning to the Gotei 13—the Fifth, Uryū had heard. 

He had faith in her ability to turn Aizen’s former division around. 

Settling next to Rukia, Uryū accepted the teacup she handed him with a murmured word of thanks, relaxing back into the cushion. The conversation hummed on around him, and for the most part, he was content to observe it. 

It was odd, to see all the faces here and remember himself as he had been before he knew them. Disturbing, almost, to think of what he’d have thought of them, had he known them then. For a moment, he had a curious sense of double-vision, like what used to be briefly superimposed over the present, and it left him frowning down into his cup, trying to banish the feeling. 

“Doesn’t do any good,” Urahara said beside him, leaning back so his shoulderblades pressed into the wall behind them. It afforded the words a certain privacy, let them slide under the general chatter. 

Uryu’s brows knit. “What doesn’t?”

“Dwelling. You’re dwelling. Don't.”

“That’s funny, coming from you.” It wasn’t something he knew for sure, but he strongly suspected his implication was true. 

Urahara didn’t deny it, at least. “You’re not me. It’s better that way.” He cast him a sidelong glance, one that held a beat too long. Then: “You did good, Uryū.”

He shifted his eyes back away, the last words almost swallowed by the ambient noise. “If you have to remember what it used to be like, remember that, too.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Soooo… it’s been a while. Hi again, folks. As tends to happen when I take a super-long hiatus, I’m just here to remind you that I don’t leave projects unfinished, and while I have a whole lot of things competing for my attention, including a dissertation, I’m still here. Figured this chapter had been sitting half-finished in my Chaos Theory folder for long enough. 
> 
> Anyhow, thanks as always for the support. I dunno when the next story will be along, but hopefully sooner than I took finishing this one!


End file.
